Dave John

"Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it."    CP Scott

He was right. I threw my last TV out of the window in 1995. Really. 

Hmm, its a fine idea, but all the action in an opera house is inside. Since you are building a hill why not go for an open air theatre? 

For example;

https://www.minack.com

Then you have all the fun of making the players, the audience , the sets ..... 

Very impressive. 

I have always fancied a loop over loop roundy roundy, but I would need about 40' x 15' in EM. But just thinking, that is 10'x 5 ' in OO. If you took that size, kept the trackplan but actually made it N then it would work rather nicely. 6 instead of 3 coach trains, you halve the inclines and everything gets a bit more space round it and the curves make more sense. 

Just a thought. 

I built one from the kit a long time ago, still runs nicely. I seem to remember that the tightest bit was the clearance between the leading crankpin and the rear of the crosshead. 

Hmm, interesting stuff. Food for thought as ever corbs. 

Dawsholm gasworks, which was fed by the CR and the NB had some 2'6" fireless engines. I'm tempted...... 

Thats a brute of a thing, can you imagine what shovelling coal into that firebox would be like? Nice model though... 

I have had a mess about trying to scribe scottish bond brickwork on a silhouette since nobody makes it. So far results are not good, but if I do find a way of getting the scribing bit to a clean finish I'll report back. 

Nice chassis.

Worth remembering that the Caley ones invariably ran with an engine tender for more coal capacity, effectively a converted wooden framed coal wagon for more coal capacity. Some industrial ones had similar tenders. 

 Plenty of pics online, and an opportunity to add another four pickups for better running. 

Aye, very nice. A bit of lining makes a big difference. 

As a portrait user I keep popping in here and learning stuff. So many thanks all, I appreciate all your input. 

Things do vanish Mikkel. I took my friends pup for a walk up the Kelvin today as far as Dawsholm Park. Thats 6 Caley bridges, a NB one, 4 gasworks, a big loco shed and a paperworks all gone. But if you look hard the traces are there.  As modellers we are are all recording history as best we can, and even if we don't get all the details perfectly correct our debates leave clues for the historians of tomorrow to discuss. 

My friends upstairs are keen on horses. One was in the mounted police; the other is into showjumping. Both are interested in our studies of the industrial use of horses from that perspective, your stable drawings were favourably compared to existing facilities. 

Now, that might seem a nebulous link, but it all ties in to the idea that by studying the links between railways and society we are not narrowing the historical field but opening it out. 

Welcome to the silhouette club mikkel. 

Hmm. I'm not a good figure painter, but my friend took one look at the Preiser figures and said " But, women of that age would not have glowing pink legs like that in the 50s. Stockings would be worn! " Or since they are Preiser perhaps "Die alte fraus ".  I then got a lecture about stockings' from which I learned that if they were not available ladies would ink a line up the back of the leg to look like a stocking seam. At which point I dived for cover muttering about rivets. 

As ever , its not modellers that spot the obvious, its non-modelling observers. 

I have followed your work for many years Alan, and it is top class. So, the above is not critical in any way. 

Well, I have no experience of the  the prototype, but the methods for modelling it are very innovative. A first class read, many thanks. 

Or use a bit of steel, penny washer sized on the base part of the load before you coal /pva it. Lifts out with a magnet on a stick. 

Heh, I do apologise Mikkel, folk dive in and get involved. I am as guilty as the rest, if not more so.  Nick Holliday sums it up well on two counts:  Firstly the recognition that the westinghouse brake was by far the best continuous brake available, and secondly that Mike Williams book is the best researched account available. Anyone up for modelling the Steel-McInnes brake ? 

The early board of trade requirement was to have a "break-vehicle" every three or four coaches in a train. Each would have breakman. 

So part of the incentive for the development of continuous brakes was economic, you could run a train with fewer paid staff. ( Yep, as ever, money was the imperitive. ) 

I was in Lidl, Maryhill Road, Glasgow this morning getting my messages, as we say in these parts. 

The soldering station and a selection of the parkside mini drill tools were available, seems to be the same £ 8.99 and 2 for £4 that they were last year. No idea about the soldering iron, but the mini drill brushes I bought seem fine to me for the price. 

Many years ago, late 70s - early 80s I had a N gauge layout for continuous running. I have always played with electronics, at the time I had a commodore 64 computer. So I rigged up a speedometer consisting of two photocells a known distance apart on one side of the track and two lights the other side. A bit of electronics fed the moment the train broke the beam at sensor 1 and the time at 2 to the c64 which then did some maths and displayed the speed on the screen in MPH. I gather you can now buy ready made ones. 

I seem to remember that I was surprised to find how fast things were going, and learned to drive trains a lot slower. 

Absolutely top class modelmaking Hauk, I am following your techniques with amazement.  

I have just spent an enjoyable few hours following the route of the line on google earth and reading about its varied, and at times explosive, history. Of particular interest is the link through Christian Salveson who was involved in the construction of the line to my own interests of railways, shipping and transportation in Scotland. 

So, many thanks, I have had a very educational morning. 

I have been involved in a number of restoration projects for historic buildings and I have seen experts trace layers of paint back to the original. It is highly skilled and painstaking work. 

http://www.cottiers.com/uploaded/2011/04/restoration.pdf

So I find all the paint sampling of historic railway wagons very interesting, amazing what the careful use of a scalpel reveals. I used the techniques I had learned from the experts to have a go at paint sampling on the balustrade of Benalder St bridge , from which I concluded that it had been painted mid grey three times. Oh,  and some whitewash underneath for the blackout. 

Anyway, I'm following all this with interest. 

Excellent cameo there Mikkel.

" Aye Arthur, I told ye the tea in the canteen tasted funny..... "

Well I said I would report back on all the info I learned from this thread when I actually made something. 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/2091/entry-18832-a-bit-of-a-scene/

Really, no way would I have made 100 sections of balustrade by hand

Many thanks all.